


The fruit of knowledge

by anactoriatalksback



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: A semiliterate yomp through history, Finger Sucking, Food Porn, Genderfluid Character, Genderfluid Crowley (Good Omens), M/M, Rimming, The rest is honestly pretty tame, The rimming is in the last chapter for ease of location/avoidance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-09 12:06:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19887463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anactoriatalksback/pseuds/anactoriatalksback
Summary: In which Aziraphale praises Crowley's body the best way he knows. AKA a history of Crowley's body through food.





	1. Tongue

_Whitechapel, 1888 C.E._

_Anguilla Anguilla_ is not one of Her most prepossessing creations, thinks Aziraphale. Its eyes are beady, its tiny fins are absurd, but not enough to be endearing, and its origins are shrouded in an astoundingly dull mystery.

But shucked and cooled with nutmeg and lime? Oh then, why _then_ it’s an electric, filthy delight. Something to eat with one’s elbows on the table, chasing pies and mash and a pint of Mrs Craddock’s home-brewed as you try to wheedle her into telling you what her secret is. You think it’s the bay leaf – something earthy and rich, something that draws out the Malay sailors and the Torquay whelk-sellers on St. Katherines Docks, the cobblestones and the gravel and the horse-dung and the twinkle of the ankles of the mollies of Limehouse, something that –

Aziraphale sits up. Somewhere nearby is a spike of hate and fear and a terrible slavering want, slicing though the swirling background mutter of petty resentments and preoccupations. Aziraphale’s feet carry him out onto the street before he knows it. It’s here, he can feel it, but where –

A young woman stumbles up to him. Her skirts have been ripped, petticoats stained red. Her tucker and blouse have been pulled off her shoulder, and Aziraphale can see a thin line beginning over her carotid. She crumples at his feet, and Aziraphale bends over her. Her pulse, he should check –

He feels the hate bearing down on him like a fist, and gasps at the onslaught.

When the blade comes whistling down, he is momentarily taken aback. He’s heard, of course, about the killer stalking poor unfortunate women in the East End, but here? Now?

And then he feels the blade pierce the skin at his throat, and really. How _rude_.

He reaches back and grasps the wrist holding the blade. He turns to look at the man – it is a man – eyes wide and terrified. The knife falls from his grip.

‘Oh, no,’ says Aziraphale, ‘I really rather think not, I’m afraid.’

The hate beats at Aziraphale’s temples. It tastes thin, like gruel that’s been left out too long, watery and acidic. He could call a constable, perhaps, if one is to be found in Whitechapel.

Yes, maybe he should.

And then the man falls forward as though he’s been pushed. He slithers down the length of Aziraphale and flumps onto the ground.

‘He’s dead,’ says a familiar voice.

‘Crowley,’ says Aziraphale, ‘Did you – is this your doing?’

‘The Ripper?’ says Crowley, stepping into the light. ‘Of course not, you think anyone but a human could ever manage that sort of - ’

‘Hatred?’

‘Fear,’ says Crowley.

‘Yes,’ says Aziraphale, ‘The lust, too - ’

‘Oh, that I think I could find within myself,’ says Crowley. His hat throws a shadow over his face. It looks like a knife. ‘The lusssst, I mean.’

Aziraphale looks down, cheeks heating. ‘You didn’t need to kill him.’

‘I didn’t really,’ says Crowley. ‘Just gave him a little push. You can bring him back, if you like.’

Aziraphale’s lips tighten. ‘I think,’ he says, ‘that that may be … wasteful.’ He gestures to the other body at his feet. ‘There’s this poor unfortunate creature to restore, and it will rather raise eyebrows if I’m to - ’

There’s a click and a low moan as the body of the young person stirs. Before Aziraphale’s eyes the red stains on the petticoats vanish, the slash on the throat heals.

Aziraphale looks at Crowley, who shrugs. ‘They don’t check on _me_ ,’ he says.

‘That was,’ says Aziraphale, softly, ‘thank you.’

Crowley looks away. ‘’s an investment,’ he says. ‘He’s going to tempt a Tory politician away from a crucial vote.’

‘He?’ and Aziraphale looks down. Ah. Ah, yes.

‘So anyway,’ says Crowley, ‘don’t mention it.’ He tips his hat to Aziraphale and takes a step back.

‘Come inside,’ says Aziraphale, putting a hand on the retreating arm. ‘Mrs. Craddock makes the most _wonderful_ jellied eels.’

* * *

Aziraphale never does find Mrs. Craddock’s recipe. She sold up and moved to Norfolk, and none of her descendants seemed eelwards inclined.

Aziraphale mourns, occasionally, but does not repine. Not with Crowley writhing urgently in his lap, and the pith and slipslide of Crowley’s tongue – flicking across his lips, ducking under his own, darting out to lick his teeth.

Crowley’s chosen a human tongue this time. He doesn’t always, and Aziraphale likes the teasing bifurcated nip and flutter. But this, too – this nimble quicksilver flash and slip – this, too, he can enjoy, enjoy the dark profane delight of it, the wet hot panting, the delicate mobile tip, yielding and firm and wicked in turns and all at once. This tongue slithering up from the depths of the river, all alive and rich and weighty, this tongue that Aziraphale catches between his lips, that vibrates against his cheek as Aziraphale skims a hand under his shirt and Crowley hisses ‘Yessssssssss’.

This hot, giving, endlessly forgiving, _filthy_ tongue.


	2. Eyelashes

_Ispahan, 3 rd century B.C.E._

‘You don’t think it’s true, do you?’

Aziraphale starts. He looks across at Crowley, sitting opposite him. A long hand twitches the veil away from her face as she gestures at the bowl of _Sholezard_ in Aziraphale’s hand.

‘They say,’ says Crowley, nodding outside, ‘Alexander’s army? They say the Persians use saffron as a drug. Or an aphrodisiac.’

Aziraphale considers the bowl. Rice, _golab_ , cardamom, and _za’afran_. Rich and tempting, alighting trippingly on the tongue[1] like a promise or a kiss.

Not that Aziraphale would – not that he can speak to – not that Aziraphale would know _anything_ about –

‘I’m sure I wouldn’t know,’ he says.

Crowley casts him a sidelong look. ‘They’re taking them back to Greece, though,’ she says. ‘Sssssaffron bathsss.’

* * *

Years – many years – later, Aziraphale considers the long pale length of Crowley, the dark red eyelashes resting on his cheek. Strands of saffron, delicate and fragile, whispering against Aziraphale’s thigh or brow or lips. A curative, they say. A drug. An aphrodisiac.

Almost certainly, thinks Aziraphale, and bends to wake Crowley up. A flutter of his own eyelashes against Crowley’s cheek.

[1] Though Aziraphale won’t come across that particular expression until quite some years later, cheering on a moody Danish prince.


	3. Cheek

_Goa, 16 th century C.E._

Aziraphale watches carefully as the priest grafts the narrow green stem onto the mango plant. The air is pregnant, heavy with season. Aziraphale likes the rich rust red of the soil, the _shusha-shusha_ of silk of his _kurta_ and _dhoti_ , the bursting sweet-sour of the fruit on his tongue.

He could do without the fibre getting stuck between his teeth, mind.

Twenty years later, the Jesuits perfect the formula and name the fruit of their labours after the Duke of Goa.

At its best, the fruit is a deep gold with the merest hint of a blush warming its skin. Its flesh is firm and silken, and when you let it rest on your tongue you are a god of summer – burnished and laughing and entirely sure of yourself.

* * *

Crowley’s secret places, too, are like this, warmed as the afternoon light slants through the windows in his Mayfair flat: when Aziraphale runs his tongue along his inner cheek, when he grazes his teeth on the underside of his jaw, when he sips at his mouth. Something nurtured and watched over and perfected over aeons, promise and sweetness and a heady, explosive rush.


	4. Fingers

_Tyrol, 1914 C.E._

‘Not sure it’s safe for you here, you know,’ says a voice overhead.

Aziraphale glances up and smiles. He approves of Crowley’s frothy shirtwaist and hobble skirt. It gives her serpentine glide a clipped, imperious tension.

‘I’ll be all right,’ he says. ‘Besides, who knows when I’ll be able to pop over to Tyrol once it all _really_ takes off.’

Crowley grins. ‘Learned your lesson, have you,’ she says, ‘after that little _contretemps_ in 1793?’

‘Quite,’ says Aziraphale. ‘They were wonderful crepes, though.’

‘Yes, angel,’ says Crowley, and Aziraphale has to look away from the fond exasperation in her voice.

He takes a forkful of _Spatzle_ and raises it to his lips, his eyes fluttering shut. Braised onions, a tumble of Gruyere and Emmental, clinging to rough-hewn fingers of flour and eggs. Confident and muscular and comforting. A dish to savour, to rub one’s belly and follow with a nice lie-down.

He lets out a long sigh. As his eyes open, he sees Crowley watching him. Intently.

He pushes his plate over. ‘Would you like some?’

He wants, rather badly, for Crowley to say yes. For those thin red lips to close over Aziraphale’s fork, for the long line of that pale throat to swallow hearth and home and robust flavours and good cheer.

Somewhere in the streets, the Radetzky March is playing. Somewhere, a long sunlit childhood is coming to an end.

‘He wasn’t even anything special, really,’ says Crowley. ‘The Archduke.’

‘All God’s creatures are - ’ begins Aziraphale, and finds he doesn’t have the heart to press the point. Once again he proffers the plate. Crowley’s eyes flit between the steaming white and gold and brown, back up to Aziraphale.

Thin, nervous fingers push Crowley’s sunglasses back up, and Aziraphale finds himself slumping back in disappointment.

* * *

Crowley’s fingers are long. Elegant. Constantly on the move: twitching, fretting, jammed into the absurd excuses for pockets of his skintight trousers. Snapping, gesturing, flickering, flapping, restless, seeking, altogether impossible to pin down. Like sparrows in flight.

He seems surprised, the first time that Aziraphale takes hold of his wrist. About to ask what in Heaven’s name Aziraphale thinks he’s playing at. Extravagant expostulations dying on a choke as Aziraphale guides his fingers to his mouth.

They twitch, feebly, once. Aziraphale feels them on his lower lip. But Crowley holds still – so still – as Aziraphale’s lips close. He draws them in, further, deeper, resting on his tongue.

Supple, he thinks, tensile and strong. If he slips his tongue between them he can lick off the traces of claret that Crowley had spilled when gesticulating about the Loch Ness Monster. If he uses his teeth – carefully, so carefully – he can feel Crowley’s jolt, vibrating down the length of his arm. If he hollows his cheeks he can pull them further down, pressing against his palate.

Warm, underneath, the lifeblood of him, something brittle and terrifying, a knife-edge, sharp and lethal, but also … comfort. Uplands. Home.

He draws off Crowley’s fingers with a soft sound, and sighs. A long, satisfied, sound, the sound of a question delightfully answered, an appetite slaked just enough.

Crowley swallows. Aziraphale watches covetously.

He reaches out his index and pointer finger. Grazes his throat, leaping and skittish under his touch. Feels Crowley’s wrist bound under his thumb. Gasps as Crowley’s hand twists under Aziraphale’s, as his fingers – wet and glistening with ethereal spit – pull down his bottom lip, trail over his chin, beneath his jaw, down to his throat.

‘I’ve wanted,’ says Crowley. His voice is hushed. Stunned.

‘Yes,’ says Aziraphale, ‘yes, I’ve – mmnngghh.’

Crowley’s jammed his fingers into Aziraphale’s mouth again, and as he sucks them down, starving and giddy, he thinks it’s not the same as watching Crowley feast himself, but it’ll do.

Oh, he thinks, as Crowley’s fingers press on his tongue, it’ll do.


	5. Arse

_Piedmont, 15 th century C.E._

Aziraphale watches as the sow roots through the ground. Her wide nostrils flare, sensitive and alert, as she presses them to the forest floor. Imperatrice, she’s called affectionately, and the Pope’s man sniffed that she ought to be muzzled, but it seems unfair. The Empress has an exquisite nose for truffles, and an instrument so fine should be nurtured.

She comes to a halt. Sniffs. Sniffs again. Lowers her noble head and makes short work of the soil. Surfaces with an unprepossessing lump of matter in her teeth.

‘ _Bravo_ ,’ says Aziraphale, clapping. His _giornea_ whispers pleasingly as he does so. ‘ _Vieni qui, tesoro_.’

Imperatrice balks and Aziraphale’s lips tighten. Of course she will be rewarded, but all must wait their turn.

‘That is very naughty, _bella_ ,’ he says. ‘ _Adesso, per favore_.’

An unconvinced grunt. Aziraphale approaches, fingers raised to snap. ‘ _Adesso, tesoro_.’

A long moment, and then Imperatrice drops her treasure.

‘ _Grazie, bella_ ,’ says Aziraphale as he stoops to retrieve it.

He lifts the truffle to his nose. Robust and earthy, confident and strong. Millennia of loam and rot and death and rebirth, orchids and vines and chestnuts and oak, Belbo and Apennine, Alps and the Tethys. The truffle knows its history. It will lie heavy and rich on your tongue and nose.

Aziraphale likes new things – freshly baked bread, dew on the banks of the Severn, a tender young shoot – but there is a satisfaction to time, a magnificence to rot. Aziraphale’s days and ways are made of light and air and spirit, rootless in time or space. Sometimes he likes to pretend his feet touch the ground. Sometimes he likes to pretend that if he lies down on the forest-bed, his weight would leave a mark.

Few things so comfort him with their cavernous immensity, or the authority of age.

The truffle is one.

Crowley is another.

* * *

Plutarch thought that truffles were made from lightning in the soil. Juvenal insisted it was thunder and rain.

When Aziraphale runs his tongue up Crowley’s thigh, he thinks he can taste both.

His hands rest on Crowley’s arse-cheeks, lifted high. Crowley himself is gasping against the pillows, drawn taut as a bowstring.

‘Shhhhh,’ says Aziraphale. He kneads with a loving hand. Firm and wiry, whipcord and sinew. If Aziraphale pressed a little – harder, tighter – he would see the marks of his fingers, because Crowley knows he likes to see himself on his skin. And he does, he does. But when Crowley is truly lost, entirely driven by his own pleasure, his concentration slips. He forgets precisely how flesh works, his and Aziraphale’s. He forgets to keep the marks. Sometimes – and how Aziraphale treasures those moments – he cannot remember to make them in the first place.

No, Aziraphale cannot reliably pretend he is a thing of flesh with Crowley.

What he can do – what Crowley lets him do – is borrow Crowley’s flesh for a time.

Aziraphale parts Crowley’s cheeks. ‘Hello,’ he murmurs as he looks down. ‘ _There_ you are.’ He bends his head and runs his nose up and down. A good Barolo should be savoured, after all.

Oh, here it is. Pith and musk and sulphur and good rich earth. Promise and heat and warmth.

‘A- angel,’ says Crowley.

‘Mmmmmm,’ says Aziraphale, and licks.

He feels Crowley’s hole flutter against his tongue, beating like a heart. He presses kisses on it – quick pecks, then longer and open-mouthed – and nibbles around it. He opens his mouth wider. If he follows the grain of the skin beneath him, it yields against his tongue, but if he goes the other way there’s a little resistance, just a little, a tensile coquettish thing, it’s miraculous.

‘Please,’ says Crowley. He’s trembling, Aziraphale can feel it beneath his palms. ‘Pleasssse.’

‘Ssssshhhh,’ says Aziraphale again, a little more insistently. He can see the trail of his spit vanishing before his gaze. Crowley’s paying attention, but he’s being pulled under.

Aziraphale follows the trail with his tongue, slick and shining afresh. Lower, lower, lower, down, down to where Crowley’s bollocks hang, all ready for Aziraphale to tongue and lap at and for Crowley to writhe anew.

He grips more firmly as he moves back up, leisurely. He bestows little nips along the way. The heat of it, the spring, the give under his teeth, oh, how does Crowley leave the house? If Aziraphale had this at his disposal, this endless many-splendoured fractal, he’d go mad, where could he even begin?

Aziraphale rubs his face against the inside of Crowley’s buttock in an ecstasy of gluttony. ‘Darling,’ he says, ‘darling, you’re _scrumptious_.’

Crowley’s forehead presses against the pillows. ‘More,’ he says, ‘more, or ssssso help me - ’

The flesh under Aziraphale’s tongue is soft. Soft and hot and redolent of secrets. When Aziraphale swirls his tongue around that clenching hole, he thinks he can taste the sediment of ages. He seals his lips to Crowley’s hole and sucks and rubs himself against Crowley’s thighs. Lying down on the forest-bed, he thinks, Meiocene Langhe, Alpine waters, mulberry and cherry, Porcini and crocus. All of these and none of them, something entirely and particularly Crowley, the core of him that Aziraphale can bury his nose in, can take heart in as Crowley bucks and rocks back against his tongue.

He has a pang in his heart that Crowley cannot taste what he tastes. Crowley’s always preferred watching Aziraphale glut himself, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr handle is [itsevidentvery](https://itsevidentvery.tumblr.com/) if you'd like to come yell with me there.
> 
> A handy-dandy rebloggable link is [here](https://itsevidentvery.tumblr.com/post/186583719420/the-fruit-of-knowledge-anactoriatalksback-good) if you are so inclined!


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